Quine on Indeterminacy of Translation

Assumptions:

I. (like Davidson, who also cites Frege) the SENTENCE is the basic unit of meaning (meaning holism) “we learn short sentences as wholes, we learn their component words from their use in those sentences, and we build further sentences from words thus learned” [446.1]

II. behaviourism (for linguistics, at least): “there is nothing in linguistic meaning beyond what is to be gleaned from overt behaviour in observable circumstances.” [446.2]

“The field linguist’s entering wedge”

Compare linguist to scientist: field linguist is like physicist: observe behaviour and make conjectures, which can then be tested. Contrast trying to translate Etruscan: because it’s a dead language, much harder (like observational science, astronomy)

1. Must be able to recognize (at least conjecturally) signs of assent and dissent

2. there must be observation sentences - declarative sentences (often one word long) that report empirical observations

3. BUT: can’t know what are words at start - no way to break down sentences (can’t assume gaps mean anything (or absence of gaps - after all, we don’t always give gaps when we speak)

448.1 - Gavagai example.

Indeterminacy of reference: Gavagai could mean “temporal stage of a rabbit” rather than rabbit (or, if not enough opportunities for checking present themselves, it could even refer to a fly that often eats rabbit shit. BUT that’s not Quine’s point - he thinks that the totality of all possible evidence still underdetermines reference.)One could say in response that there is a way to work out which the native means, by asking them further questions, like, “is this the same gavagai as before?” (if yes, that rules out the temporal conjecture), BUT Quine’s point is that we can only ask such questions when we have a more detailed translation manual that gets at words for “is the same as”, and to get to that point in the manual we have to have already made a decision on “sortal” predicates like rabbit. One could say to THIS point that we can just make an assumption about gavagai to get us started but come back and revise it (in Neurathian fashion) but to this Quine says that depending on different assumptions at different points in the manual, exactly the same empirical evidence will support two very different translation manuals.

4. Work on connectives [449.1]

5. compare segments of non-observation sentences with segments of OSs and make hypotheses about words that way.

6. ways to limit hypotheses [449.2]:
Continuity (no radical changes of the subject mid sentence)
principle of charity: The bulk of what a native says using their language is true
They have a language with compositional structure

7. keep it simple (assumption that natives are like us and that it must be simple for them to have acquired it as children - the child’s “entering wedge” is the same as the field linguist’s.

8. signs of success: smooth negotiation and conversation (signs of failure - reactions of astonishment or bewilderment

Indeterminacy of translation: “the English sentences prescribed as translation of a given Jungle sentence by two rival manuals might not be interchangeable in English contexts.”

Why doesn’t this show up in practice much? Because we make other languages like our own: the field linguist “imposes his own ontology and linguistic patterns on the native wherever compatible with the native’s speech and other behaviour... the radical translator is bound to impose about as much as he discovers” [451.1]

What this means for meaning

Meaning and synonymy are related - if we have a grasp on one, we have a grasp on the other. BUT, what the indeterminacy of translation shows is that we cannot establish synonymy, even in our own language (you may think that two phrases you use are synonymous, but you were in the same position as the field linguist when you originally picked them up).

What are we relying on in our initial conjectures? Answer, stimulus meaning: “The stimulus meaning of a sentence for a subject sums up his disposition to assent or dissent from the sentence in response to present stimulations”

This is a verificationist standard of meaning: “the meaning of a sentence turns purely on what would count as evidence for its truth”

Stimulus meaning underdetermines real meaning, least in observation sentences, but even there (“gavagai”)

Searle’s criticisms

Searle calls Quine’s argument for indeterminacy of translation a reductio of linguistic behaviourism, which was one of his assumptions. Searle’s argument:

“if all there were to meaning were patterns of stimulus and response, then it would be impossible to discriminate meanings which are in fact discriminable” - QED.

That is, in the first person case I know that I mean “rabbit” and not “temporal slice of rabbithood”

Also: “It is only assuming the nonexistence of intentionalistic meanings that the argument for indeterminacy succeeds at all” [480]

That is: Quine’s argument is meant to show that there are no such things as meanings, and to show this by showing there is no such thing as meaning the same. But his evidence for this is just that we can never tell if our meanings are the same as others’. But only if you assume that no evidence means not there does this prove anything.

(OR: if you assume that the facts of language are necessarily public, so that if they’re not available to all, then they’re not there - like Davidson. BUT says Searle, why not take it for granted that I do know the difference between rabbit and slice-of-rabbithood, and therefore reject that assumption, or reject the assumption that because a field linguist can’t access that that it’s inaccessible.)

Chomsky’s move would be to say that we’re all hard-wired, so we have built-in conceptual schemes.